Chapter 21: REASON AND PERCEPTION

VII. The Last
Unanswered Question

1 Do you not
see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are
powerless? Being helpless is the cost of sin. Helplessness is
sin's condition; the one requirement that it demands to be
believed. Only the helpless could believe in it. Enormity has no
appeal save to the little. And only those who first believe that they
are little could see attraction there. Treachery to the Son of God is
the defense of those who do not identify with him. And you are for
him or against him; either you love him or attack him, protect his
unity or see him shattered and slain by your attack.

2 No one
believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who see themselves as
helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. What can they
be except his enemy? And what can they do but envy him his power, and
by their envy make themselves afraid of it? These are the dark ones,
silent and afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of
the Son of God will strike them dead, and raising up their
helplessness against him. They join the army of the powerless, to
wage their war of vengeance, bitterness and spite on him, to make him
one with them. Because they do not know that they are one
with him, they know not whom they hate. They are indeed a sorry army,
each one as likely to attack his brother or turn upon himself as to
remember that they thought they had a common cause.

3 Frantic and
loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet they know not their
"enemy," except they hate him. In hatred they have come
together, but have not joined each other. For had they done so hatred
would be impossible. The army of the powerless must be disbanded in
the presence of strength. Those who are strong are never treacherous,
because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their
dream. How would an army act in dreams? Any way at all. It could be
seen attacking anyone with anything. Dreams have no reason in them. A
flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant and a
mouse roars like a lion. And love is turned to hate as easily. This
is no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a planned attack is
bedlam.

4 The army of
the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons and it has no enemy.
Yes, it can overrun the world and seek an enemy. But it can
never find what is not there. Yes, it can dream it found an
enemy, but this will shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at
once to find another, and never comes to rest in victory. And as it
runs it turns against itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the
great enemy who always eludes its murderous attack by turning into
something else. How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes
so it is impossible even to recognize him.

5 Yet hate
must have a target. There can be no faith in sin without an enemy.
Who that believes in sin would dare believe he has no enemy? Could he
admit that no one made him powerless? Reason would surely bid him
seek no longer what is not there to find. Yet first he must be
willing to perceive a world where it is not. It is not necessary that
he understand how he can see it. Nor should he try. For if he focuses
on what he cannot understand, he will but emphasise his helplessness,
and let sin tell him that his enemy must be himself. But let him only
ask himself these questions, which he must decide, to have it done
for him:

Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that
rules me?
Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless?
Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin?
And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?

6 You may
already have answered the first three questions, but not yet the
last. For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. Yet
reason would assure you they are all the same. We said this year
would emphasise the sameness of things that are the same. This final
question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to
hold a threat the rest have lost for you. And this imagined
difference attests to your belief that truth may be the enemy you yet
may find. Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of
finding sin, and not accepting power.

7 Forget not
that the choice of sin or truth, helplessness or power, is the choice
of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power, and attack
of helplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal.
And whom you would have healed must be the one you chose to be
protected from attack. And what is this decision but the choice
whether to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be
revealed to you through vision? How this decision leads to its
effects is not your problem. But what you want to see must be your
choice. This is a course in cause and not effect.

8 Consider
carefully your answer to the last question you have left unanswered
still. And let your reason tell you that it must be answered, and is
answered in the other three. And then it will be clear to you that,
as you look on the effects of sin in any form, all you need do is
simply ask yourself,

Is this what I would see? Do I want this?

9 This is
your one decision; this the condition for what occurs. It is
irrelevant to how it happens, but not to why. You have
control of this. And if you choose to see a world without an enemy,
in which you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given
you.

10 Why is
the final question so important? Reason will tell you why. It is the
same as are the other three, except in time. The others are decisions
that can be made, and then unmade and made again. But truth is
constant, and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. You
can desire a world you rule that rules you not, and change your mind.
You can desire to exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this
same desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. And you can want
to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use
the body's eyes and change what you desire.

11 In
content all the questions are the same. For each one asks if you are
willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees,
since it is this the world of sin denies. And therefore those who
look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world. Yet the last
question adds the wish for constancy in your desire to see the real
world, so the desire becomes the only one you have. By answering the
final question "yes," you add sincerity to the decisions
you have already made to all the rest. For only then have you
renounced the option to change your mind again. When it is this you
do not want, the rest are wholly answered.

12 Why do
you think you are unsure the others have been answered? Could it be
necessary they be asked so often, if they had? Until the last
decision has been made, the answer is both "yes" and
"no." For you have answered "yes" without
perceiving that "yes" must mean "not no." No one
decides against his happiness, but he may do so if he does not see he
does it. And if he sees his happiness as ever changing, now this, now
that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing, he does decide
against it.

13 Elusive
happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and
place, is an illusion that has no meaning. Happiness must be
constant, because it is attained by giving up the wish for the
inconstant. Joy cannot be perceived except through constant
vision. And constant vision can be given only those who wish for
constancy. The power of the Son of God's desire remains the proof
that he is wrong who sees himself as helpless. Desire what you want,
and you will look on it and think it real. No thought but has the
power to release or kill. And none can leave the thinker's mind,
or leave him unaffected.